CSI: Enigma
by Thor2000
Summary: Sequel to CSI: Immortality pursues two separate but equally odd disappearances with even stranger endings, one crossing over with a known horror TV-Series
1. Chapter 1

It was only when the young entered grammar school that they retained any semblance of innocence, but then they eventually went into the dreaded junior high school and formed the life-lasting mistakes and decisions that would last a lifetime. The future criminals of tomorrow rejected the rules, ignored their life set morals and acted surprised when they were constantly in trouble and hated by their peers. The rest followed their lessons and accepted the instructions posed to them as guidelines for life. Many high school kids did not last or survive their teenage years, instead dropping out of society to get a head start on running from the law and hating the normal people who lived in the light of day and earned an honest living. It was perhaps in college that most life long lessons were made. There were the students studying hard for their future careers, the slackers who drank their lives and health away from the neck of a bottle or the end of a hose emitting the addictive smoke rejected by their bodies, and then there were the rejects who had yet to drop out of society, instead waiting and looking for the means that something else would eject them from the world altogether. Leon Tacker walked through the bacchanalia he had created at Alpha Omega Rho fraternity on the campus at the University of Las Vegas. Attending the school on a football scholarship, he looked over to chemistry major Brandi Fogg buried under Owen Hanks, a drama major, on the sofa, her tank top pulled up to her shoulders as Hanks aided in her degradation. Leon grinned over to Ben Connors serving beer over the carnage they had created. The rap music resonated off the walls, the floor groaned over the would-be mature adults jumping around as if ants were eating them, and minor cults formed out of cliques being created as every vice and substance was explored. The scent and stink of spilled beer and stomped snacks filled the air. Law major Frank Wise chased a young maiden with one thing in mind down the stairs and out on to the quad. Ralph Carter mulled through the party praying no one had broken into his room to violate his bed for sex. Judd Hersch reminded the newer college kids that as an assistant teacher he had access to test papers he could sell to future exams. Brenda Maxwell rushed round Leon sick from the alcohol spiked three times over. If anyone survived this party, it would not be much of a party. There was over a hundred kids present in the forty-room dormitory, and more were still coming. A beer bottle shattered off the wall, other partiers were trying to scale from the roof on ropes made from sheets and one sociology major tried smoking and inhaling a dying fern from the hallway. Leon Tacker laughed his loud boisterous snort at the sight of once prim and proper Amanda Hayes losing her inhibitions to alcohol and flaunting her uncovered chest to her peers and subordinates. Someone was going to get tossed from the university by time this party was over.

"Where's Spenser?!" He screamed over the noise and multiple conversations as he asked about their dorm supervisor.

"He had a meeting with dorm director!" Connors yelled back as he poured a beer from the tap for another young lady.

"About what?!"

"Too many wild parties on campus!" Connors answered. He and his fellow athlete looked over the room and continuing madness. Another bottle was shattered against the wall. A young lady squealed loudly over her boyfriend touching her. Their pledge was stomped and shoved as he tried cleaning the broken glass and strewn junk food wrappers. A young lady's brassiere was flung into the air and came to rest on the bar in the corner of the room.

"Someone's going to be expelled!!" Tacker laughed through his snickering amusement. He looked at the bra before him. "Hey, who's a size thirty-nine D?!"

"Hey," Connors tugged his buddy's t-shirt sleeve. "Can you watch the bar?! I want to make time with this girl!" They screamed their conversation over the Usher music. He pointed over to the brunette beauty watching far afar. Petite and busty with perfect childlike features endowed with womanhood, the captivating lovely rolled her hazel eyes amusingly from the teenage orgy over to her new conquest. A deep breath lightly raised her perfect chest from within her dark sweater.

"Is that Kelly Clarkson?!" Tacker noticed the incredible similarity to the pop star.

"No…" Connors moved out of the way that Tacker could take over the drinks. "Her name's Lisa… but you're not the first to ask her if she's Kelly. She's an assistant from the history building!!"

"No, I'd have seen her before on campus!" Tacker took over custody of the beers. Leaving his post, Connors maneuvered around jumping and dancing classmates to the Idol look-alike. She took an immediate shine to him and took his arm as he turned for the staircase past hanging toilet paper and drunk fraternity brothers passed out from excessive drinking on the stairs. On the top landing, he passed two classmates using the hall for a location of secret debauchery, lead his conquest to the second door and pushed it open, surprising and pointing the way out for a frat brother to leave with his date for another room. Lisa's hazel eyes watched as Ben cleared the room for them and locked the door against further intrusions. His arm pulled her close and his lips closed over hers. Her figure pressed against his form as he pulled away his shirt to his muscular body. Lisa lifted up to hang from his shoulders, her feet up off the floor and her legs wrapped around his abdomen. With that added weight, Ben could only fall backward on to his bed. Just past the crunch o his mattress he looked up to see Lisa pulling her sweater upon over her head to reveal her brassiere supporting her bosom. He started wondering who was seducing whom. Ben felt his blue jeans undone and started pushing them down to his ankles. Lisa was nuzzling his ear; her voice giggling over the racket of music coming up through the floor from the party downstairs. Ben gasped for air a second as every sensation of his body became stimulated. He looked at Lisa holding her bra away at arm's length before dropping it to the floor. Ben guffawed excitedly; this girl was veracious. He felt her body against him, his breath pressed out of his body and started screaming when he felt the burning…

"Nothing like a murder to kill a party." Las Vegas Police Sergeant Jim Brass quipped and looked over the destruction. The party decorations had been trashed, the floor was littered with aluminum beer cans and broken brown glass and junk food wrappers wafted through on the wind from outside. The structure had faired worst. Wallpaper was hanging loose. Wood railings had been pulled out of the banister and a ladies undergarment hung from a ceiling fixture. Police littered the room too taking depositions from the few remaining guests and the frat brothers left on site. CSI Tech Warrick Brown bumped a beer bottle with his foot as he entered the scene.

"The power of kids, huh." He mused a bit surprised at the mess. "If only they could channel it into something positive."

"Teens need to experience freedom to depreciate it." His superior Gil Grissom responded with yet another insightful look into the human condition. "They depart home and restriction, they are challenged by the real world and they learn from their own mistakes better than they can from their parental figures. They can't learn to appreciate rules unless they discover what makes them important. I'm sure you were much the same way."

"I had my grandmother over my shoulder most of my life." Warrick mounted the staircase stepping over trash and strewn clothing in his way. "I never cut loose and I turned out okay."

"Gambling addition not withstanding…" Brass was standing at one of the bedrooms. The door had been knocked down, but the room looked otherwise intact. The room was typical college. There was the solitary bed with a desk set against the wall and a trunk at the foot of the bed. Warrick started first by snapping photos of the posters of women around the bed and on the closet, but the prominence of the Aguilera and Britney posters against the scant textbooks and class work on the desk surely revealed where the priorities lied with this person.

"Here's the story…" Brass started improvising a little ditty. "Of a drunken college kid who brought a girl up to his room. They vanished inside, then there was a scream… and no one inside when they broke down the door."

"No one?" Grissom asked.

"No one…." Brass added. "The room is exactly like they found it."

"Well," Warrick checked the two windows looking over the quad. "These are regulated windows to seal in temperature. They don't get opened." He rapped the glass. "The only way out is that way." He pointed out the door. Grissom snapped a photo of the bed and pulled back the sheet to discover a large pool of viscous liquid. It was a bright red fading to orange along the edge. It looked as if it had spots of blood in it as well as a cornucopia of other thinner fluids and floating cellular debris. He reached his regular test to check it for blood as well as for a sample in a small jar.

"What is that?"

"Oh god…" Warrick turned round. He recognized it. "I've seen it before." He looked to Gil. "Two months ago, Nick and I were investigating a case on Caldwell where a sick kid vanished from his bed. That same spot was on the bed."

"Whatever it is…" Grissom reached to take a sample. "It looks like you get another chance to solve it."


	2. Chapter 2

Leon Tacker sat nervously in the police department interview room. He was a bit worried they had checked on him and found his previous charges of drinking and driving and substance abuse, but since then, he had cleaned up his life. Despite the repetitive beer, he was keeping up with his studies and living the straight and narrow to hold on to his football scholarship. Except for a few skirmishes, he knew he had nothing to worry about, or at least hoped he had nothing to worry about. His left leg hopping nervously in his seat, his fingers tapping at the table, he heard the door crack and open wide and looked from the officer watching him over to Captain Jim Brass entering the room.

"How you doing, Leon?" Jim pulled out the opposing chair to sit down.

"Fine."

"Hey, you can calm down here." Jim noticed his nervous quirks. "I'll let you know when you're in trouble." He parted a file and spread it out before him on the table in front of Leon. "Now let's see, your buddy, Ben Connors, headed upstairs with a young girl, and vanished with her into his bedroom. A minute later, you heard screams from the room, and you and several of your alcoholic buddies broke into the room and found… nothing."

"Pretty much."

"How'd your buddy get out of the room with the girl?" Jim asked the question. "Does he have like a secret passage or something? Did he go out the window?"

"I don't know."

"Come on…." Jim grinned and tilted his head like a dad grilling his kid. "Are you covering for your buddy? You don't want to go down with him. At least tell me the girl's name."

Leon started drawing a blank. What was her name? What did Ben say it was?

"Her name?" Jim started wondering if the boy was actually legit. He could read it when someone was lying, but this college kid was seriously drawing a blank. "You know, it's the second question after what's your sign?"

"Lisa…" Leon suddenly remembered. "Lisa Bobbitt. I hadn't heard it before tonight, but I think she's an assistant or something from the history department."

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere." Jim started writing notes. "What do you know about her? Where can we get a picture of her?"

"She won't be hard to find." Leon's leg continued twitching. "She looks exactly like Kelly Clarkson, well, old Kelly… with the dark hair… and bigger boobs…" He placed his hands before his chest to demonstrate his point.

"Kelly Clarkson?" Jim looked up. "Like from American Idol?"

"Yeah…"

Sara Sidle departed from watching from the other side of the two-way mirror in the room. Turning on her heel, she stepped from the room and headed toward Trace where Connors' white bed sheet had been draped and hanging from the wall. A large orange stain on it had the shape of a human body without arms, legs or a head. Intrigued and curious, David Hodges was stifled by what he was perusing under the microscope. Sara placed her hand to his shoulder to get his attention.

"Hey…" She got him to look up. "Well, any similarities?" She wanted to know if Connors vanishing act could be linked to the disappearance of young William Danvers some weeks before.

"Plenty…." Hodges mused a bit in his intellect. "Both traces from both scenes are a residue mixture of sweat, plasma, skin cells, enzymes and damaged red blood cells, but the cells are in lyses. I couldn't get DNA."

"No idea if they're from the male or the female." Sara spoke the obvious.

"You know," Hodges rose from his seat and approached the sheet deep in thought. "You know what I'm thinking. I'm thinking this is residue from a degenerative disease, something that causes the victim to expel or vomit excess tissue."

"Then it would have to come from the girl instead of Connors." Sara used her deductive reasoning. "Anything like that would have been detected by the college physician for the football team." She made an unspoken thought and turned round to read the trace examination report. "I'll get Brass to run her priors."

"Way ahead of you…" Jim appeared in the room. "Her name is Lisa Bobbitt. I'm getting her history now."

Another CSI named Catherine Willows was off to another crime scene with Nick Stokes by her side. The drive to the Winchester Rest Stop was a two-hour drive, but then, their gasoline expenses in the course of work was covered by the city. There was no way the city could cover the annoyance of the long drive in a Denali truck with a busted AC Unit. By time they reached the rest stop, it was after dusk and light was fading fast. Catherine had a wonderful windswept look from driving with her car window open, while Nick had uncovered down to his CSI-issued dark blue t-shirt with the gold-stenciled badge over his heart. Local police as well as the state patrol were at the rest stop amidst campers and RVs. Stadium level lights atop large metal poles lighted the gravel area. Upon arrival, Nick took a quick swig from his water bottle for a while and commenced with his forensic kit ready to proceed with business.

"Catherine…" Local sheriff Max Walters recognized the lovely red-haired CSI from previous cases in the area. "I was worried you might get lost."

"Not quite…" She looked over to Nick for the moment. "You have a missing girl?"

"Maddie Franklin, four-years-old..." Walters continued. "She's the daughter of Matt and Tricia Franklin from Hendersonville, Tennessee. He's a Nashville police officer; she's a medical doctor, both out here for a vacation. Maddie was playing with three other kids over in the children's area, but when she didn't return for dinner, the mother panicked. Dad called the police."

"Did they see anyone suspicious?" Nick was checking his kit.

"No…" Walters briefly removed his hat from his snowy white hair, wiped away a covering of sweat and replaced his hat. "I've been treating it under the belief the girl wandered off instead of a kidnapping until I hear otherwise."

Catherine looked over with her own maternal feelings to the grieving mother sitting in a lawn chair under the tarp of their RV. The dad was using his experience to try and take charge of the local police investigation, but he was not being allowed to go too far. Nick began by surveying the area from the camping area toward the children's area. It was a roped off area filled with sand with swings, an elaborate climbing set with assorted children's playsets. Snapping pictures along the way, he stepped onto the deck of the vending machine hut, snapped one photo and gazed briefly to the tree line some twenty feet from him. He wasn't sure why he looked at it, but he was reminded of his youth and wanting to follow fishing trails. There were dozens of them near the woods near his childhood home, and they often twisted and turned around and through gullies and groves to several different fishing holes.

"Sheriff…" Nick called for Walters. "Have you had anyone check the fishing and game trails."

"I've got three officers and volunteers out there right now linked by radio." Walters tilted his head up with concern as a father himself. "But with the darkness, they'll be coming back soon."

"What are you thinking, Nicky?" Catherine shifted her weight to her other leg.

"Well, she could have gone exploring…." He panned around once more. "Or she could have…. Hello, what's this?" His eyes noticed something that didn't belong to the ash tree a few feet down the path. He reached for tweezers and a sample container, plucking the swatch of strange hairs off an errant twig and collecting it. It was possibly something; it was possibly nothing.

"Look like hairs…" Walters stated.

"It means something could have come this way." Catherine took her light as the sky started growing even darker. She panned the path for a clue of the child's footprints over matted leaves, crushed brush and foliage growing every which way. The trail itself was bare; it was a dirt trail weaving around large hundred-year-old trees and thick brush, subsequently splitting some thirty yards ahead. She paned her floating beam of light to and fro then chanced to go off the path and noticed a pattern of disturbed leaves amongst the other woodland floor coverings.

"Hold it there…" Nick grabbed her hand with the light and showed her where to aim it. With her beam showing the way, he dodged his way around a large oak and hit the spot he had designated. Leaning to the forest floor, he started snapping pictures than started framing the trace he found by clearing the leaves from it.

"You got any plaster?" He asked.

"Yeah, what is it?" Catherine leaned in with her light at the step Nick had found. He measured it at fourteen inches with his light aimed from his teeth, but the odd thing was the lack of a tread pattern. It looked like a large human foot, but much too large to be human. He sprayed it to preserve it for a cast then started mixing the plaster with water from his water bottle.

"Tuft of long hairs… large footprint…" He began talking.

"Don't say it." Catherine chided him.

It was completely dark when Greg Sanders headed for his disappearance case. The case was at the end of Puckett Street on Harmon, the site of a previous case. An accountant heading home, maybe a bit tired and sleepy, he didn't have alcohol in his system, had stopped short to avoid a pedestrian dashing in front of him. His sudden stopping resulted in another car stopping short to avoid hitting him, but knocking him into a nearby tree. The area was blocked off with one wrecked car pushed into the wall of the cemetery adjacent and a second car with a caved in front end. Rotating orange, red and blue lights lit up the area as police guided through cars and paramedics tended to two injured drivers. Greg could see one officer coming up to him from around the fire department rescue truck. Lieutenant Ralph Everett had crossed paths with him on a few cases.

"You're it?"

"Everyone's on cases…" Greg responded nervously on his solo case. Everett sighed taking what he could get and turned back to the accident scene.

"The first driver's name is Matt Felts, a CPA…" He began calling the scene. "He stopped short to avoid hitting a pedestrian but got rear-ended for the attempt and then slammed into the cemetery wall. The pedestrian, however, was knocked over his car and hit the asphalt behind him, just barely getting missed by the car in back. We're still looking for her…"

"Her?" Greg looked around re-examining the scene. "She's not here?"

"The other driver, Chloe Harridge, said she saw the girl vanish over the wall of the cemetery and run off." Everett pointed to the other driver tended by another paramedic. "She's not as banged up as Felts, but she's a little shaken up. Where do you want to start?"

"With Felts…" Greg carried his kit and placed it on the ground near the ambulance. The injured driver was in traction; his head in a brace and his body held immobile. He looked up with two brown eyes from a bruised and tired face.

"How are you doing, Mr. Felts?" Greg reached to acknowledge him by touching his hand without a handshake. "I'm Greg Sanders from the crime lab. I'm here to find out what happened. Did you see the girl you hit?"

"Yeah…" The tired and distraught CPA looked up worn from his experience. "I don't know where she came from. One second I'm listening to the news on the radio, and then she was appearing in my headlights." He paused for a breath. "I braked as fast as I could, but I still somehow managed to hit her. Oh, god… I hope she's okay."

"Well," Greg scribbled the notes he thought he needed. "You'll be happy to know she somehow made it away from the scene. My job is to find her and get her to the hospital. Did you get a good look at her?"

"Yeah, but you're not going to believe me."

"Why not?"

"She looked exactly like Kelly Clarkson."


	3. Chapter 3

3

"Okay…" Grissom looked at a map of the area around the Strip. "First our girl vanishes with a football player at the University…" He stuck a pin at the location of the University in the lower right area of the map. "She gets hit by a car near the cemetery here." He stuck a pin in the map directly northeast across the other side of Boulder Highway.

"And survives…" Sara mentioned out loud.

"Indestructible little minx, isn't she?" Hodges remarked sarcastically.

"Then she's noticed on the Strip by a security guard from the Showboat Casino who promptly loses her." Grissom stuck another pin at that location. "All within five hours."

"She's fast too."

"She's got to have someone helping her." Sara spoke. "She's been connected to all these disappearances and there's never been a body found. Someone else has to getting rid of them for her. "

"Okay…" Grissom started postulating. "Let's say the human sludge is part of a hereditary disease. Now, some of these diseases are fended off but not cured by taking healthy cells or organs from normal people. Maybe, just maybe, she's taking what she needs to survive."

"But the whole body?" Hodges remarked. "Even Count Dracula wasn't that greedy."

"I know where you're going." Sara thought it out. "Maybe she's carrying and getting rid of body parts, but still… we're still missing a whole body. She's can't be carrying off more than ninety to ninety-five percent."

"Hodges…" Grissom turned to his trace expert. "Run the sample again. See if there's anything in that genetic soup that belongs in the body that isn't represented." Grissom turned out the room for his office. Passing him on his right side, Nick was studying a map of the area around the Winchester Rest Stop. Divided by Spring Mountain Road, the region was several square miles of inhospitable rocky and difficult wilderness with few structures and unfriendly animals. His mind was around Maddie Franklin either curled up alone or being sheltered by a human like animal. Maybe his lab tech of choice could tell him something.

"Mandy…" Nick tried charming Mandy Simms, the DNA tech. "What you got for me?"

"You make me sound like a drug dealer." The pretty brunette chuckled a bit and stepped backward for the file. "The hair…" She started. "Is not human, but it is primate."

"Give it to me." Nick saw himself busting one of the mysteries of mankind. "You have nothing quite like it, have you?"

"Well…" She didn't want to bust his cryptozoological balloon. "Of the primates, it's very close to chimpanzee… but not quite. It also has characteristics with human hair."

"Sasquatch hair, I knew it."

"Nick," Simms paused and leaned over the counter. "Human beings and chimpanzees are at least seventy percent DNA compatible. Chimps are sometimes given human blood in surgery. If you want my opinion, it's a large chimp."

"Have you seen the footprint we got?" Nick looked around for it. "I've seen chimps. I've been around them. They don't have feet like that, plus… I measured the depth. It would have weighed over eight hundred pounds. The largest chimps top out at two hundred pounds."

"Nick…" Mandy resisted him. "Don't you think I want this to be something cool? I just think there has to be another explanation."

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once said…" Nick responded like Grissom. "That if you eliminate every possible answer that the last answer no matter how incredible has to be the correct one."

"He was talking about a criminal investigation." Mandy looked at him. "Not the mysteries of mankind."

Responding to another call, Sara grabbed up Greg and responded down to the Doubletree Hotel on the Strip. From the start, it sounded like a dead body had been found at the hotel. Carl and Dana Price were local residents who had checked in for a night away from their kids. Dana wanted to briefly hit the downstairs stores, but her husband wanted to relax. When she got back to her room, her husband seemed to be missing, and then she found the evidence that drove her to the brink of fear. The hotel manager called the police and they notified the crime lab. With their arrival, Dana Price was noticed crying in the hallway as an officer took her affidavit. Curious and morbidly fascinated hotel guests watched as Sara Sidle lead the way in her police vest and toting her forensics kit ahead of Greg Sanders. It was a year into his fieldwork and he was still getting used to the procedure. Sara stepped first into the Price's room and looked at the disturbed bed. With Greg taking pictures, Sara pulled the sheet back to reveal a large gelatinous stain of red goop in the center of the bed, a Rolex watch to one side of it. Sara stared at it in disbelief.

"One guess as to who's been here ahead of us." Greg spoke to Sarah looking back at him.

"Can we talk?" Brass appeared at Grissom's door back at the forensic offices of the police department. The bug man had the glass jar of his beetles open to feed them dried beef.

"Of course…" Grissom resealed his bug jar and placed them by his fetal pig. "New results in my case?"

"The British would call it a sticky-wicket." Jim stepped forward into the dimmed room. "I got Bobbitt's priors from California…" He placed each fax down by state. "Oregon, Montana, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, New York and Maine, the Canadian Mounted Police wants us to send them our files."

"How many people has this girl killed?" Grissom started researching the case deeper.

"Oh, it gets better." Brass was still musing over the turn the case was taking. "When Bobbitt was in Chicago, her murders were covered by a tabloid reporter named Carl Kolchak. Have you heard of him? No, forget him… he's not important. The point is… that was in 1975."

"How old is this girl?" Grissom read police files of mysterious red stains at crime scenes going back forty years. "I though Bobbitt was supposed to look like Kelly Clarkson?"

"It gets even better!" Brass chuckled at how this case was evolving the more he delved into it. "Turns out, Bobbitt may be an alias. We've got girls matching her description under the names Lisa Parker, Lisa Wilder, Lisa Welch, Lisa Bathory, Lisa Borden, Lizzie McMahan, Sondra Greenberg… I guess that's for killing Jewish guys, and we got one Lisa Bobbitt from New York City who went to the women's wing at Rykers in New York State for being a slasher, and she was knifed to death just eight months ago, and she doesn't even look like our Bobbitt." He handed over the actual New York Bobbitt's rap sheet; she looked nothing like their supposed Idol clone.

"Maybe it's a ritualistic thing…" Grissom tried to fathom the logic from this barrage of back-stories.

"Okay," Brass thought about it. "I hadn't though of that, but where does this degenerative disease come in."

"Well," Grissom eyed a Xerox scan of the Kolchak newspaper article where he accused Bobbitt of being a succubus. "Maybe it's hereditary, maybe her family's part of this cult going back this far."

"Grissom…" Sara had returned to the department just behind Greg taking his evidence to the lab. "Do you like Britney Spears songs?"

"Which one?" He looked up.

"Oops, she did it again…."


	4. Chapter 4

4

"You want my opinion…" Coroner Al Robbins analyzed the human sludge at a molecular level to make sense of it. "It's not sludge; it's residue" He looked over the microscope to Grissom.

"What's your determination in that?" Grissom asked.

"Well," Robbins hobbled on his good leg through the dimly room. The room was dark except for glowing x-rays and light reflecting off surfaces. "If it was just sludge expelled by the victim, I would have expected some stomach acid mixed in with it, but instead, all I see are exploded blood cells, degenerated skin cells, free-floating lymphatic material and a lot of inert plasma. It's almost as if it were… rejected."

"So," Grissom wished he had taken more human biology. "We're not far off from a degenerative disease."

"Degenerative is right…" Robbins turned to wash his hands and dry them. "It's almost as if these cells were filtered through something, robbed of all nutrient and stability and then just discarded as if… whatever had taken them had drained all it could from them."

"If that's the case…" Grissom reflected on this new information. "This would be all that's left of Connors."

"What happened to the other ninety percent of him?" Robbins spoke what Grissom was thinking.

"Maybe, just maybe…" Grissom started creating a radical theory. "That is ninety percent of him."

Twenty miles from the security and excitement of the city, Catherine Willows thanked the good Lord that she never had a father that took her camping. The morning sun was already out and underneath her CSI gear, she felt like a baked potato. Amidst the other volunteers searching, she was constantly swatting away mosquitoes, she had little leaves and twigs traveling down the back of her neck and she had stumbled or nearly fallen twice as they checked the trails between Winchester and Las Vegas. Sheriff Max Walters coming up behind her had caught her once, but the only reason she expected he stayed behind her was to admire her figure.

"Okay," Walters paused and took out his canteen to take a drink. "I'm starting to think we're looking in the wrong place. I think the girl might have been abducted." He offered her water, but she had her own.

"I believe you're right." Katherine sipped her own flask and looked through the arid woodland. "A little girl lost out here would want to be found plus, she could not get this way on her own." She reached for her cell phone. "Nick, where are you right now?"

"Back to the lab," The handsome criminologist hopped from his Denali and proceeded inside. "I got an Amber Alert out plus I've made contact with a chopper. I'm going on the second air search in a minute." He paused to get a drink from a vending machine. "Anything new with you?"

"Nothing much…" Catherine sweated and fussed with her hair to keep cool. "I'll let you know if I get anything." She turned to reattach her cell, but when she did, something caught her eye. She noticed a depression in the dirt by her left foot. It was shaped like a footprint, and it was a good sized one at that. Walters noticed her pulling out a measure and her camera.

"Ever couple weeks," Walters noticed her distraction. "Someone reports on a large hairy man rummaging around their camp site or breaking into their cabin."

"Fascinating…" Catherine snapped her photo.

Back to the lab, Warrick Brown turned round with a slight sigh. He reached up and tiredly palmed the top of his head, watching his buddy and partner Nick Stokes once again coming toward him. Sweaty, sunburned and tired, Nick had just spent eight hours combing the wilderness west of Winchester for the missing Franklin girl. He was covered in bits of leaves, he had dry dirt across one leg and the seat of his pants, faint debris caught in his hair and his face was still perspiring as his body temperature tried to cool him. After some rest and something to eat, he was going back out again, this time in a helicopter for a much more broad search.

"Well, look at you!" Warrick chuckled a bit. "It looks like you've been camping!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Nick held his fresh cold water bottle to his face to try and cool off. "I hear you got a new lead in that old Caldwell case we had. What, another pool of human sludge?"

"Yeah," Warrick looked up with his hazel eyes. "Another crime scene…"

"Anything to link the two besides the sludge?"

"Yeah, and how…" Warrick continued. "The girl who vanished with Connors was described as looking like that Kelly Clarkson from American Idol, but get this, young Will Danvers, who vanished two months ago, he went to Piedmont High School. His guidance counselor was… Lisa Bobbitt, the same girl who vanished with Connors. She left the high school two weeks after his disappearance for the job at the college."

"That's a bit more than a coincidence." Nick sipped his bottled water from the machine. "So, did you hear we might have a sample of Bigfoot DNA in trace."

"Aw, Nick…" Warrick scoffed at the idea. "Don't tell me you believe that stuff. I mean think about it… Europeans settle this continent four hundred years ago and find every indigenous Native American tribe there is to find except a race of hairy seven-foot-tall apes? I don't think so."

"Yes, yes…" Nick tried to debate it. "A race of intelligent apes that have managed to avoid detection except for random sightings over several years. There are parts of this country that have still to be explored, places that have remained unchanged for over ten hundred years."

"It's next to impossible that an undiscovered great ape could be living in the United States wilderness." Warrick stuck to common sense.

"Not really…" Nick stuck more to the possibility. "There are new species being discovered everyday… like that deer in Vietnam." He tipped his cold water back to his lips.

"Nick…" Warrick placed his hand on Nick's shoulder. "I have to tell you something. Vietnam is a lot different than the United States."

"You seem to be forgetting…." Greg came around Warrick to get into this conversation. "That long before our ancestors came to this country, the Native Americans already knew this thing existed and even worshipped it." He bounced his gaze back and forth between them. "I mean, they've got drawings of these things around pictures of ordinary things like wolves, bears and deer. If these things didn't exist, why would they chronicle them with things they experienced every day."

"The guy's got a point." Nick started liking Greg a bit more.

"In fact," Greg continued. "My Uncle Olaf used to tell me stories from Sweden about…"

"You guys are killing me." Warrick chuckled at their beliefs. "Come on, Stephen King…" He pulled Greg with him. "You're helping me at the university." He tugged at the former lab tech to get him used to the field. After a bit of searching in the employee records at the university by way of a subpoena, Jim Brass was driving toward North Las Vegas and Montgomery Street in particular. The university mailed Bobbitt's paychecks to a post office box, but her address was listed as a former Fifties-style restaurant in a high-crime neighborhood. The structure still had its typical burger shack shape with derelict speakers on posts in back, but the windows were boarded up like a fortress. Patrol cars converged on the weed-strewn and litter-filled site and a few teens not yet into their criminal careers dashed off the sidewalks in fear of their would-be prison futures. A few honest but struggling families sweltering in the heat sat on their front stoops and watched the military-like routine of police officers and the SWAT teams swarm the front of the location and take their positions. At the forefront, Sergeant Jim Brass took command. He looked upon his armored and unarmored officers, twenty-three in all, garbed in body army and flak jackets and took his position behind a patrol car.

"Lisa Bobbitt…" He responded first through a megaphone. "We have a warrant to search the premises. Come out with your hands up!" He stood down waiting a response. There were no windows. The building had been sealed up like a fortress. Out the corner of his eye, agents with high caliber rifles dashed to cover the back door. Jim held his hand up a moment to lead the bust then gave permission to storm the place. A battering ram carried by four officers plowed the front door down ahead of the teams and eight officers streaked ahead with their guns at the ready.

"I love this job." Brass checked his gun and responded next. Once inside, his eyes scanned the interior. Anything restraunt-like had been removed. There was no front counter nor tables and booths except for one row across the front. The former dining room had been set up like a study and living room with carpeting, tasteful but not expensive furniture and a rollback desk against the wall to the kitchen. SWAT officers poked around plants and furniture, sticking their gun tips under and behind chairs and past an aquarium of lionfish. The location was dark except for a ceiling fan with a light illuminating the room. The kitchen area looked relatively the same, possibly in the same condition it was a few years ago when it was still a business, maybe just a bit cleaner. The only things in the walk-in freezer were a tub of Neapolitan ice cream and a stack of frozen steaks. The cooler only held a box of Chinese food, a jar of grape jelly, a partial pudding cup and half a jug of iced tea. The décor consisted of yard sale art: a picture of Elvis painted on velvet, an amateur landscape painted over a mirror, a heavily stained imitation of Currier and Ives and a "Star Wars" movie poster in a protective glass case. One of the SWAT members exited the restroom area and gave the clear signal as Grissom entered the location.

"Well, this is cozy…" He entered ahead of Sara.

"She's set up better than I am." Sara pulled on her plastic gloves to look for evidence. "Kitchen, first?" She got a nonverbal reply from him and moved past the officers for a detailed search.

"Well, this is nice…" Brass stood by as officers took control of the property. He leaned down to look at the fish in the tank. "I mean, it's a bit dark with the windows covered over, but I guess you get used to it." He watched Grissom wander past him, treading lightly around the coffee table and sofa and poke through the blanket and pillow on the sofa. Behind him, a TV Guide on the coffee table was folded open to a particular day. He snapped a few pictures of the magazine before picking it up and scanning through it. All the horror movies for the week had been circled and planned with little notes scribbled around them. For the late night airing of the movie _Night of the Demons_ from 1986, Bobbitt had scribbled the name, Angela and the words "infestation," "possession" and "demonic." On a mid-day listing for _Friday The 13th: Jason Lives_, the words "psycho," "weapons" and "body count." His forensic and intellectual priorities working, Grissom turned the page and read the words "presence," "UFO nonsense" and "goddess" around the 1958 classic _Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman_ being repeated on the Sci-Fi Channel.

"Look at this…" He showed it to Jim. "She's been psychoanalyzing the horror movies she's watching. In fact…" Grissom looked around the room. "I think this entire place is a façade."

"A façade…" Brass shifted nervously in this place. "You mean… it's not real?"

"She lives here, but she doesn't really live here." Grissom explained and continued toward the desk. "She doesn't own a single personal item… anything that reflects her character. No bric-a-brac, no hobbies, no past, no… life…"

"So, she's a psycho."

"No, psychopathic killers go through their business of killing others because they think it's how to be normal." Grissom had moved over to Bobbitt's desk. "I think Bobbitt lives like this because she knows she's abnormal and is trying to be normal. That's not a psychopath; that's a mental aberration." He snapped a few photos of the scene, opened the drawer and snapped a few photos of it hanging open. He pulled out a large binder and looked through it. "Now, we know where she's been getting her aliases…" Separated by name and dividers were Xerox copies of newspaper articles about the other Lisa Bobbitt's murder spree through Boston and New York City, printed Internet pages about the notorious Fifteenth Century Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory, ritualistic cult killer Angela Franklin from Salem, Oregon, accounts of the New England hatchet woman Lizzie Borden and several other female killer from history and abroad.

"Bobbitt, Bathory, Borden…" Brass mulled over the names. "She's trying to be more like them?"

"Or she's trying to take the power out of those names." Grissom answered. "I mean, no one would think twice about the name Bundy if old Ted hadn't killed all those girls from Washington to Florida."

"Grissom…" Sara emerged from the side door to the kitchen. "That kitchen is immaculate. There is no sign she does any sort of cooking. I think she eats entirely take-out." She made a sound of annoyed jealousy. "How does she eat that stuff and still stay so spry? I found nothing but hamburger bags and pizza boxes in her trash."

"Good genes?"

"Another thing…." Sara had a grocery list taken from the front of the cooler. "Listen to this note to herself… '1310 Hazelton, Try and eat something else for a change.' What do you think that means?"

"1310 Hazelton is the address for Alpha Sigma Rho Fraternity where Connors vanished." Brass spoke up.

At the end of the block, Bobbitt came around the corner from the local Chinese food place. Her boots scraping the sidewalk, and a Styrofoam cup of soda in her hand, she sipped her drink as she turned round the corner of a row of lower-class homes and immediately noticed the flashing lights around her home. Removing her straw from her mouth, she sighed lightly annoyed at the spectacle and turned into the other direction with her take-out for another place to eat.


	5. Chapter 5

5

The National Guard had loaned Nick the use of their helicopter for a more in depth aerial reconnaissance of the wilderness west of Winchester. With the rolling countryside of sparse to thick woodland rushing past underneath him, he checked his map and determinedly thought about young Maddie Franklin somewhere down there, possibly held securely by the bounds of an undiscovered and unrevealed hominid thus far unknown by mankind except in legend and mythology. Trees, foliage and scarce creeks of water whirred by underneath as Nick checked the search grid then noticed activity to the north. It looked like campers, but they were hardly suspicious in the matter they rose their beers to salute the copter. Nick saluted them back and re-continued the search. His mind on his job, his heart on the welfare of the girl, he exhaled deeply frustrated over the lack of her whereabouts.

Back in Las Vegas, Detective Sofia Curtis accompanied by Grissom made a return visit back to the scene of another unsolved disappearance to visit Charlotte Danvers, the mother of the missing William Danvers from two months prior. The return to the scene was not quite a forensic visit, but a courtesy call to a grieving missing mother who still had hopes her son was still alive. Accompanied by Officer Bruno Hess, Sofia arrived in her street clothes and approached the Mediterranean-style two-story stucco while removing her sunglasses. She lightly rapped at the door with due respect, and a few seconds after a look from the curtains, the grieving mother came to the door.

"Yes…" Charlotte Danvers appeared at the door in a white t-shirt and form-fitting blue jeans.

"Mrs. Danvers…." Sofia revealed her badge and identification. "I'm Lieutenant Curtis, one of the detectives working on your son's case."

"Please… come in…" The hopeful mother eagerly invited them in. Sofia looked the room over from the pictures of young Will in various stages of development. He was in his early youth in the photos on the wall up to the second floor landing but in his last known pictures around the furniture of the sunken living room. Sofia particularly noticed one photo of the youth with his mother and lightly sighed as she took her seat.

"You've found him?" Mrs. Danvers looked optimistic. "Is he okay?"

"Mrs. Danvers…" Sofia responded carefully and respectfully. "We've recently entered a case with stark parallels to your son's disappearance and are looking for further connections between the two." She took a file from Hess and took out a series of photos. "Now, I'm going to show you a series of photos; I want you to tell me of any of them look familiar." She laid out six unnamed photos of various brunette women. Among them was the known photo of the Lisa Bobbitt from New York, the current Kelly Clarkson clone from her university employment records and even one of Sara Sidle and another Idol contestant by the name of Katherine McPhee. The other two were of a female pedophile from Reno named Lizzie Castellari still rumored to be at large and Lynsey Culberson, a local actress once booked for being drunk and disorderly. Charlotte draped her long brunette hair over one shoulder and peered over the images. Her hand lightly shifted Castellari's image and hovered over McPhee's until picking up the photo of the Clarkson clone.

"My son loved Kelly Clarkson…" Charlotte revealed. "He clipped and collected every photo he could get of her. He even claimed his guidance counselor looked like her."

"Did you ever meet the woman?" Sofia pulled out her leather notebook to take notes.

"No…" The soft-spoken mother answered. "But I know he visited her practically every day in her office. Being an only child and not very good in sports, she sort of counseled him a lot." Charlotte paused as she thought about her. "Did she have something to do with my son vanishing?"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to answer that." Sofia responded. "But I do have to tell you that your son's status has been changed from "Missing" to "Possibly Murdered."

"You're no longer looking for him." Charlotte's eyes started welling up with tears.

"Mrs. Danvers…" Sofia tried to remain as professional as possible. "Most missing teenagers turn up in the first twenty-four hours after they vanish. Going by several other disappearances similar to your son's…. the odds of him turning up alive are unlikely at this point."

"Okay…" Warrick Brown was back at the university dorm room. Greg was with him taking notes and more photos.

"Locked in the room…" He thought out loud. "Only one way out… and that was broken in, not out…" He turned round looking over the room. "How did she get out of here dragging a body?"

"Secret door?" Greg picked his UV light from his vest and shone the wall a bit looking for a trace of a secret entrance. He passed the end of the beam from it over the wall slowly and noticed a handprint. When he noticed it, he panned around it and noticed another one.

"There's no room for a secret passage much less a way into the next room." Warrick noticed Greg directing his attention elsewhere. "What do you have?"

"I don't know." Greg adjusted for a filter on his camera to get the handprints on the wall. Warrick took his larger light for more of the wall and discovered he was lighting up traces of sweat from the wall in the shape of handprints and toes going up the wall, stepping off the ledge around the doorframe to the closet and then scaling up the wall. Above the entrance to the room, he found handprints on one wall and directly across from them bare footprints on the opposing wall. The width of the entry way was about five feet.

"So that's where she went!" Warrick bounced his light back and forth. He pictured it in his mind. When the boys rushed the room, they never would have looked straight up. Bobbitt would have been perched back to the wall above the door; her hands pushing hard enough against the opposing wall that she could have simulated levitation. The constant force against the two walls at once would have kept her from falling just long enough to seemingly vanish into the air until she could drop down and away.

"That would have taken a lot of physical strength." Greg photographed the prints. "But what about Connors? She couldn't have like… eaten him."

"That's the million dollar question, isn't it?" Warrick checked to see if the screen to the AC duct had been tampered with, but it was quite solid. The closet had been checked, and the trunk they had was too small. "What did she do to him?"


	6. Chapter 6

6

The picture of Bobbitt from the University could have been the real Kelly Clarkson; for all they know, it could have been. Grissom eyed the pic and compared it with a known picture of the actual Idol sweetheart printed from the Internet. The similarities were intense, but there were subtle differences in the space and shape of their features. The Clarkson clone seemed older despite her appearance. Sitting at his desk, Grissom measured the sizes between their eyes, the width of their nasal features and the breadth of their skulls. They were almost exact once he settled the size ratios.

"We got her." Brass had appeared at his door and looked at him.

"Who? Bobbitt?"

"She tried snatching a kid from a day care off Decatur." Brass gave him the file. "Officers have her in custody."

Grissom skimmed the arrest report quickly. According to the file, Bobbitt had covered three blocks with five-year-old Moira Cassidy with her and then a mile and a half before she was finally stopped and pinned to the ground kicking and screaming to be cuffed. Her chase had involved rooftops, fire escapes, the back door of the Golden Nugget Restaurant and a brief ride on a bus before ending up on the Strip watched by several hundred by-standers and twenty-two officers baring arms. It was quite obvious she was not afraid of being shot. Wearing a black leather jacket zipped up to her cleavage and faded and torn blue jeans, she sat silently leaning back in her seat. Her long brown locks draped over the back of her jacket, her hazel eyes peered up with masked innocence from her doll-like face.

"So." Brass entered with Grissom behind him and took a seat. "I guess looking like a major pop star has got to be a bitch, huh? You know, we've been looking for you."

"First off," Grissom started. He really did feel he was looking at the dubbed America's Sweetheart. Bobbitt was the exact image of the American Idol the night she won the over-hyped televised singing contest. Her face was perfect, her eyes were as innocent as a child and her body was spectacular. "We need your real name. All of your aliases have been eliminated as coming from other missing persons or deceased individuals."

Lisa tilted her head to one side as if she was bored. It did not look as if she was going to talk.

"Okay, I know where this is going now…" Jim took the lead. "Listen, pudding, that little cocktail you've been leaving behind has been connected to seventy-three disappearances in the last three years across two continents, five alone just here in Las Vegas that we know about." He looked back at her. "Now, if you work with us, the district attorney might go easy and get you whatever medical attention you need, but first, what'd you do with the bodies? You couldn't have done all this by yourself."

Lisa pulled out the front of her jacket and blew air into her cleavage trying to cool herself off. She pulled the front of it back and forth like a bellows to pump air in and out. Sitting back again, she annoyingly shifted in her seat and lifted her head back up to Brass and Grissom full of contempt for them and for what they stood.

"Are we boring you?" Brass observed her demeanor.

"We have your prints at each of the crime scenes where you've left your mark." Grissom played a more analytical and logical approach. "You know, the pool of sludge. We're going to want a blood sample from you for a medical analysis for hereditary diseases."

Lisa chuckled under breath at that one.

"What's so funny?" Grissom didn't like that response. Neither did Jim. Bobbitt just stared back at them, leaning back into her chair and taking a deep breath without a single word. She acted as if this was all a minor annoyance, just another minor obstacle in this life.

"Princess," Jim looked at her. "We've got just enough to put you in the electric chair."

The Clarkson clone defiantly extended her arms, daring them to put her in handcuffs.


	7. Chapter 7

7

Jim Brass had headed to his regular restaurant for breakfast and then hopefully swing by his home for rest and a shower before his next shift started, but it didn't work like that. Just as soon as he paid for his eggs, toast and coffee, he got the word on his cell phone that someone other than Nick Stokes had found the girl. First, he didn't know what girl, and then he flashed back on young Maddie Franklin, the small darling who had vanished from the rest stop. A group of campers heading toward Pahrump had heard about the girl on the radio then noticed a naked little lady on Highway 160 some eighty miles north of Las Vegas an hour later. Ignoring his shower, Jim dashed back to the police station to make sure it was her. A brief stop by the sandwich machine near the waiting room and the small fridge in the break room, he sat across to the tiny and tired little rascal.

"Hi, princess…" Brass felt like a dad to every young girl he ever encountered. "I hope you like that PB and J. I got it specially for you."

"It's okay." Precocious Maddie Franklin sat dressed in a makeshift outfit from a t-shirt draped around her body and tied around her fifteen-inch waist. She tossed away the crusts and sipped her carton of chocolate milk.

"You know, " Brass continued. "We've been looking for you everywhere. Can you tell us where you were?"

"With the fairy queen…" The girl peeled the crusts off another sandwich.

"Oh, the fairy queen." Brass beamed over her look of the world. "I haven't seen her in years. I bet she looks different now." He smiled at bit just happy to be returning her to her parents. "Can you tell me how she looks now?"

"She's really tall…" Maddie's adorable brown eyes reflected the lights of the room. "She has long brown hair and she wears a thick fur coat down over her body. She lives in a hole in the side of the rock and eats berries, smelly fish and other stuff."

"Did she give you anything to eat?"

"Yeah, but it smelled bad…" Maddie had her polite little conversation. "Like when my daddy's dog rolls around in the trash. Roxie's a big stupid dog."

"Well, some dogs like stinky stuff." The occasionally gruff police sergeant felt his heart softened by this living pixie. "Tell me more about the fairy queen. Does she live with friends?"

"I don't know…" Maddie answered innocently. "She just seemed lonely. She liked hugging me and carrying me around."

"How do you know that?"

"She made happy noises." Maddie finished off the main part of her sandwich and sipped her milk. "Can I get some ice cream now?!"

"Well, I got to ask your parents for permission first when they get here." Jim grinned over her. "But first, can you tell me how you got away from the fairy queen. Did you run away from her?"

"No…" Maddie's legs swung a bit restlessly as she told her story at the table. "She took me swimming at the lake, but I couldn't find my clothes. She hung them on a tree. When I tried finding them, I found that road and a bunch of people found me and brought me here. Can you find my clothes? I had seventy-four cents in the pocket I want back."

"Well," Jim could not help but laugh at her misdirected concern. "We'll try and find them, but first, I'd like to know more about the fairy queen. How far do you think she took you into the woods?"

"Grissom…" Nick watched the interview with his superior from behind the mirror. "Fairy queen? What do you make of that?"

"Nothing." Grissom stood watching with the fingers of his left curled up and resting against his chin. "Kids tend to decipher the world around them by what they already know. Maddie just is explaining the facts by what she believes happened."

"You don't think she was abducted by Bigfoot?"

"Nick…" Grissom turned to the younger CSI in the darkness of the room. "Back in 1979, a thunderstorm knocked a tree into the chimpanzee enclosure at the zoo and eleven chimps escaped into the wild. Only three of them were caught, but barring enough food to eat and possibly adapting to exist in the area, I'd sooner believe they were prospering in the wild than trying to make credence for another branch on the evolutionary primate tree."

"You don't think this is evidence?" Nick looked at Grissom. The bearded entomologist thought it over a second then gave his answer.

"No."

"Grissom…" CSI Assistant Director Conrad Ecklie opened the door to the room and stood with his frustration in check. "I hear you lost a suspect in a major murder case before she could be extradited to LA?" Grissom looked to Nick and back again.

"When did this happen?"

When was thirty minutes earlier. Where was in the basement under the police department where the arrested were held before being taken to prison or bailed out by relatives. In the women's wing, usually filled with locked up prostitutes, female drug users and young teenage girls that dabbled in shoplifting, Grissom headed to the scene to determine the means of escape. It was a solely ivory-colored location with rooms separated by steel doors and chambers with numbered cells for individuals and group pens for multiple offenders. Grissom walked through to catcalls from the hookers and annoyed stares from the female gang members while Ecklie heard only hisses and boos. Their arrival ended at Cell 45A which once held the young serial killer known as Lisa Bobbitt. Entering the cell, Grissom's eyes looked round once then noticed the two bars bent apart slightly into the next cell. In that cell had been four hookers picked up from off the Strip, only one of them was hysterically cowering in fear in the corner, two laid dead on the floor and the fourth was missing. The top of the iron door to that cell had been peeled outward at the top, just wide enough for a small figure to get through it. Ecklie picked the blanket up off the bottom cot.

A large liquid pool of dissolved blood, human plasma and liquefied tissue covered the bed.


	8. Chapter 8

8

Lee Healso was a cute and attractive twenty-two year-old girl of Japanese ancestry. She had started working in Las Vegas as a dancer, but between legitimate dance jobs, she turned to hitting the streets and selling sex for money. She and her friends called themselves sexual escorts, but the police called them hookers. Amore Carpenter was of Japanese and English ancestry, but she had been found dead on the floor of the cell, the back of her head crushed inward. A blow to the head had also killed Nikki Rasmussen, but the fourth of Lee's friends, Monica Underwood, was missing. Ecklie suspected her of escaping with Bobbitt, but Grissom was not ready to take that belief at face value. Whatever had happened was locked in Lee's head.

"She's in shock." Dr. Thomas Shaw had arrived to the jail to check out the terrified girl. "She needs to be moved to the hospital."

"Not just yet, doc." Ecklie became more than a bit annoyed when a serial killer escaped his jail. "She's a witness in a double homicide."

"Let me talk to her." Grissom lifted his head up. "Let me try and get something from her."

"She's unstable." Shaw stood his ground. "She just watched her best friends killed right in front of her. She may not talk."

"I can try!" Grissom proved he cared a lot for these discarded pieces of humanity. Ecklie and Brass looked at each other in the jail corridor.

"You have five minutes."

Grissom quickly turned down the corridor for the single cell Healso had been moved. There was a female security officer standing in the open door. She stepped aside and allowed him entry to the cell then stepped out of visible range. Young Lee was sitting on the bottom bunk in silence. She hadn't moved. Clad in a red later top with leopard-skin covered tight pants and over painted with make-up and cosmetics, her fragile brown eyes just stared at the blank wall before her. Her best friends were gone. She was alone now.

"Lee," Grissom's voice was calm and fatherly. "Can we talk?"

"They're gone." Her fragile voice barely creaked. "They're all gone."

"I know, and I'm so sorry…" The bearded criminologist responded respectfully. "But… we didn't see it. Can you tell me what happened?"

"Tengu okawa tu amatsu." She spoke her native Japanese. "Face of the demon. I looked into her face."

"What did you see?"

"Face of the demon." Lee's tiny voice echoed. "Monica unleashed her."

"How did she do that?"

"She not leave her alone." The young beauty flashed back on the incident. She and her friends had been arrested for being boisterous at a pizza place out near the college when the owner got tired of them and called the police. That might have been it had Nikki not knocked over a rack of paper cups and created an incident that the police called disturbing the peace. The fight ended up with all of them getting arrested. Five police officers, two patrol cars, Lee and her friends were booked and tossed in the cell, but then Monica looked over and saw who was in the next cell.

"Oh my god…" It was an hour earlier, and Underwood recognized the other cellmate. "It's little Miss Independent!!"

"What are you doing in here?" Rasmussen looked through the bars at their neighbor. "Did someone catch you trying to sing?"

The Kelly Clarkson clone was sitting on the bottom bunk of her cell. Her back against the wall behind her, her legs stretched out and draped to the floor, she barely acknowledged the girls yelling at her.

"Is that Kelly Clarkson?" Lee's memories recalled the singer in jail with them. "Oh my god, it is her!"

"She looks like she's had a major boob job." Amore made the next snide comment. "She's built like Anna Nicole Smith!!"

"You never heard of Kleenex, baby!"

"What happened?" Underwood shot off the next remark. "Did Justin Guarini turn you down?"

Bobbitt started inching forward attracted to their comments.

"I bet Simon Cowell had her arrested for releasing records."

"Girls, girls…" Monica Underwood turned from the bars and tossed back her blonde hair. "Let's face it… she could never sing worth a damn." The Clarkson clone popped up behind her from out of nowhere and grabbed her by the hair. Jerking her head back into the bars hard silenced Underwood cruelly and dropped her to the floor. What happened next was to be unexpected. Healso, Carpenter and Rasmussen jumped back in shocked silence as Bobbitt stood on the lower horizontal support bar and grabbed two bars before her. Her teeth gritted together, her fingers curled tightly on the iron bars, she hissed and grunted in her conniption as she started pulling them apart. With her long brown hair flailing, her eyes contorted into hostile anger, she continued pulling at them, gradually getting a slight increase in space then a much wider area much more open. There was a creak, a groan from the strained steel and the Clarkson clone pulled an opening wide enough for her to get through.

"Guard!! Guard!!" Rasmussen started screaming at the door to her cell. Healso bounced off the brick wall in back first and collapsed to the floor. Carpenter tried striking Bobbitt next, but it barely fazed her. The Clarkson clone grabbed her by the jaw, lifted her off her feet and struck the back of her head against the steel bars. Underwood started fighting unconsciousness and lifting herself up to hear Nikki screaming her last. The back of her head would meet iron-wrought bars next. The next thing she knew, the Clarkson clone had turned back to her and grabbed Underwood up by her long blonde locks. Monica's screams sounded as she was flung into the bottom bunk with Bobbitt coming after her.

Her back hurting her, her head still dizzy, Lee Healso lifted her head up off the cold cement floor. Her vision a bit deluded, she listened to Monica screaming her head off. The Clarkson clone was killing her! She had her friend pinned to the bottom bunk under her body, but all she could see was the would-be Kelly pushing Monica deeper and deeper into the cot. Underwood's screams were inadvertently cut short; the strange sound of gurgling or sucking emanating from the bed. One minute, Underwood was on the bed under her attacker, and then she was no more, her clothing fell limp and empty; her devoid boots falling without her to the floor. Her breath racing, her pulse racing, Bobbitt stepped back on to the floor zipping her leather jacket back up and jumping on to the door. She grabbed the top of it and started working her inhuman strength on it as well. Flailing her upper body back and forth, her hair whipping around her, she peeled the top of the door outward like a tin can, working it backward and twisting it open that she could squeeze herself out. With the wrought iron door peeled open, she reached upward to a pipe in the ceiling and looked back briefly to Healso before pulling herself up out of the cell and scaling the underside of the ceiling looking for a way to freedom like a human spider.

"She absorbed my friend." Lee told Grissom with a haunted face. "She not human."

Sara Sidle meanwhile had kept busy by turning to the Internet for clues. Searches for Lisa Bobbitt had lead to website reports of the New York female slasher who had followed Jeff Hodges, her ex-boyfriend, around to kill the girls he had dated. Convinced that female psycho was not the one she was looking for, Sara then ran a search from the Chicago arrest report for Lisa Parker. Reporter Carl Kolchak had been a tabloid reporter for the International News Services there, and he had exacerbated the Chicago Police Department by claming that Bobbitt, then Lisa Parker, was a vampire. In the end, Kolchak only muddled the Chicago police's efforts to catch her, allowing the Clarkson clone to escape the city by distracting the police long enough for to vanish. The photo he took of her could have been the Las Vegas Lisa Bobbitt, but the grainy quality of the images could have been Sara herself as well.

Another link about Kolchak lead to the book he had written. In 1996, Kolchak, working with a paranormal researcher named David Collins, had published a book detailing his supposed clashes with the government over UFOs as well as near deaths with cryptids and paranormal forces. The determined reporter wanted to prove this activity was real, but supposed government agencies had censured the book. Copies of "The Kolchak Tapes" were hard to find, but prints still floated through used bookstores and discount bins. As Sara leaned in to study the photos from the book, her blood ran cold over the quality of a photo from 1933 Germany. There in the sepia-toned photo from Kolchak's collection was the Clarkson clone in a photo with the Fuhrer himself. She did not look like Kelly Clarkson; Kelly Clarkson looked like her!

"She hasn't aged a day in over seventy years!!" Sara told herself.

Forty miles out of town, truck driver Eugene Pratt pulled up alongside the shapely hitchhiker by the side of the road. Hauling a load of vegetables in a cooled truck to Wyoming, he was always looking for company on his long trip. The girl looked harmless. She was brunette, petite and looked to be not much of a threat. He stopped his truck alongside her as she hopped up on to his cab and opened his passenger door.

"Where you heading?" He called to her

"Denver." She claimed.

"Do you know you look like…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…"

"Well, hop on in…." Pratt waited her to swing her pack in and get settled. "I got a cooler of the sodas in back if you want one. Hey, what are you doing?" The girl had an odd look in her eyes. A few seconds later he was screaming for his life, and then he was no more and someone else was driving his rig…

END


End file.
